World test day for IPv6 to take place in June

A group of web companies have come together to test the viability of next generation Internet protocol IPv6

Google, Yahoo, Facebook & Akamai join forces

There's been plenty of talk about the shortage of IPv4 addresses and the imminent arrival of IPv6 as its replacement.

What's not clear is how effective companies' IPv6 strategies are stacking up. However, a group of major web companies are ganging together to test how IPv6 will work in practice. Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Akamai have agreed to designate 24 June as World IPv6 day.

According to a blog from Google network engineer, Lorenzo Colitti, nearly all internet users should experience no problems on the day but wrote that "In rare cases, users may experience connectivity problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices. Over the coming months we will be working with application developers, operating system vendors and network device manufacturers to further minimise the impact and provide testing tools and advice for users."

The problem is becoming more urgent as the world's supply of IPv4 addresses is expected to run out some time this summer – although it's hard to put an exact date as to when the last block of addresses will be released, although there are very few remaining now.

Google is hoping that further companies will join the initiative as a co-ordinated co-operation by a multitude of websites will help to stress the IPv6 connections being used.